Tuesday, 1 October 2013

the holey writ

Religion is one of those strange creatures which I treat with a healthy respect, but usually at a distance. I must confess that I happily adapt the more fun aspects like festivals, mythology (to suit my own ends) the cooler deities, like Shivji - what do you expect, the Banaras bit of my heritage will out somehow) and food and handily ignore the rest. My religion doesn't define me. When you have a child, you tend to think more about spirituality and religion and what have you. These are the big questions you feel. Fundamental grounding in philosophy that your child will take with her out into the big bad world. Based on the indisputable fact that all of us have a spark of the divine and that God dwells in all of us, I took the liberty of drafting my own holy writ, or rather holey writ, given that a large part of the human experience revolves around bodily orifices and can be summed up in the three Fs: food, faeces and fornication . The best part is that it is 100% adaptable: Mine will change with my child's age and you can adapt it to your own individual needs. So here goes:

When older, thou shalt eat healthy food and not fuss about eating karela, tinda, homemade bread et al like thy father does

Thou shalt sleep for at least four hours at a stretch every night without breaks for input or output.

Thou shalt not treat thy mother's breasts as a teething toy. Thou shalt certainly not repeat thy chewing antics just to hear thy mother shriek. Not even if it is an interesting sound.

Thou shalt not wait to pee or poo into a fresh diaper. Just do thy business in the old one, OK?

Thou shalt not treat the contents of thy nostrils as a wonderful and precious substance, particularly not in public.

When thou art older (old enough as judged by thy parents - OK - thy mother, since thy father is never going to think thee old enough) thou wilt learn about safe sex and informed consent and practise them.

[I hate this - but it's probably the most important one] If anyone even attempts to molest thee, thou shalt scream blue bloody murder in the loudest voice that thou canst and thy parents will beat twenty kinds of crap out of the molester. This, I promise solemnly.

That's about it for now. I guess I can always add more as I go along. Fare thee well.